Daily Archives: May 8, 2015

After warming up, we headed to Valley of Fires National Recreation Area. The Valley of Fires is a lava bed about 44 miles long and a couple of miles wide is covered by lava from a series of volcanic eruptions or fissures in the ground. This happened about 1500 to 2000 years ago, making it a relatively recent event.

The visitor center and associated campgrounds and such are on an island of ground that the lava flowed around.

We took the Nature Trail around the lava field.

It was very cold, windy and occasionally rainy. We toured the area a lot faster than we would have otherwise.

We had also visited Craters of the Moon National Park within the last couple of years, so it wasn’t quite as novel an experience as it might have been.

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We had considered taking a nice hike into the mountains we were camped near, but the weather changed our minds. It was really blustery and cold with the occasional bought of rain. Not nice weather for a long, exposed hike.

So we packed up and headed to the Three Rivers Petroglyphs National Recreation Site. On our way there, we passed by a herd of about 40 elk. A was able to get a photo of some of them. Most had already gone over the top of the hill.

It wasn’t raining when we arrived. The hike to see most of the petroglyphs was fairly short, so we decided to brave the weather. The site has over 21,000 petroglyphs in a very small area. The inscriptions were made by the Mogollon peoples about 1000 years ago.

The weather was pretty atrocious being windy and cold and raining occasionally, but the petroglyphs were well worth it. You can hop around on the rocks looking for petroglyphs (as long as you are very careful not to damage the petroglyphs). We were lucky that the weather kept the rattlesnakes in their homes. It was easy to see how this area is perfect habitat for them. The petroglyphs were almost everywhere. It was kind of like an Easter Egg Hunt to find them. I was very excited and hopped around like a small child taking photos.

Jon was very cold.

Once it started raining for the multiple time, I decided I had enough too and headed back to the Fuso. It was well worth seeing even in the nasty weather.